


Life Is But a Dream, Sweetheart

by QuoteIntangible



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: ADHD, Attempt at Humor, Brendon's father is a jerk though, But this is intended to be happy, Fluff and Smut, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Some angst, Supernatural-ish Elements, dream walking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-08-20 14:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8251778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuoteIntangible/pseuds/QuoteIntangible
Summary: Brendon has the ability to not only control his dreams, but walk in the dreams of others. However, because of his ADHD he doesn't always have control over his dream walking and often accidentally enters other people's dreams, especially when he's stressed out. One night while they're on tour, Brendon accidentally enters Spencer's dream and sees something very, very interesting.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is short-ish compared to most of the other's I've written. I am not 100% happy with my writing on this one, and I'm not 100% happy with how it's turning out, but I wrote it, so I'm posting it. 
> 
> Also, this is supposed to be a mostly happy, angst-free fic. I am apparently incapable of not writing angst, though, and I am apparently incapable of writing a story without making at least one of the main character’s parents a jerk. Listening to Goner by Twenty One Pilots while writing the first part probably didn’t help. This is mostly angst-free, though ... Mostly.

 

When Brendon dreams, it’s in bright splashes of color and music notes that float through the air and play the most wonderful songs he’s ever heard when he presses on them. It’s in the park reliving his adventures that day on the play set or making new ones with the cute little girl from pre-school with purple ribbons in her pig tails that always shares her Cheez-its with him during lunch. He dreams of the ocean, and the monsters that lurk within. They’re always friendly, though, and offer him rides when he swims out too far.

Brendon’s dreams are whatever he wants them to be.

They always start the same: four plain-white walls. But the walls are moldable, pliable, a blank canvas that he has but to push on to make whatever he wants. Sometimes he has no control, he gets too excited, or loses concentration, and they slip into something beyond even his own imagination. But if they turn scary, he very firmly tells them no, like his mother does when she catches him trying to sneak snacks before dinner, and that is enough.  The dream bends to his will.

Brendon’s dreams are special.

“They’re a gift,” his mother would say from time to time, as she tucked him into bed. Brendon was never one to lie down and fall asleep. He loved his dreams, yes, but getting there was a struggle. He tossed and turned, and snuck out of bed constantly to play with this or that, he jumped on the bed, he used the bar in his closest as his own personal jungle gym, and did everything but sleep. It’s not that he didn’t want to, he just couldn’t. On the rare occasions he could lie still long enough, his mother would tell him this story:

 “Many centuries ago on the islands of Polynesia lived a brave young man and a beautiful young woman. As most stories go, they fell in love. But their families, embroiled in a feud no one could how it started, disapproved of the couple and forbid them to see each other. Desperate to escape the disapproval of their families and to prevent the feud from escalating, they both fled their home and took to the seas. The woman had always been enamored with the sea. She spoke to the seas, she told her husband, and it would safely lead them to a new home.

“They journeyed on the seas for day after day, battling the winds, and rain, and swells of the sea, until finally they made land. Fortunately the sea had led them straight to a little village, just as the woman had foretold, where others that had left Polynesia for this strange, unchartered island later to be called Hawaii lived. The villages welcomed the man and his wife, and they settled on a little plot of land to start a family.

“But the sea called to the woman. She said it cried out to her like a hungry baby crying for its mother. She wondered the shores more and more, spending her days speaking to the seas, until one day, the woman went out to the sea and never came back.

“The sea swallowed her spirit, the locals said, she was chosen. But her husband was devastated. He mourned for her loss, and every day would sit on the beach begging the ocean to talk to her spirit just one more time. Every day he would go home disappointed,” Brendon’ mother would say. She would pause in her story then. Sometimes she’d smooth the hair off his forehead, or tuck the blankets in tighter around him. Brendon would snuggle into his bed further, forcing his eyes open so he could hear the story one more time.

“One day as the man stood on the beach, an elderly woman appeared in a voyaging canoe. The villagers called this woman _Kahuna_ , because she had no other name, and no one knew how she had gotten to the island. She lived alone in a little hut on the side of a volcano, and rarely came down to the village. No one knew what she did up there, nor how she survived. Those who went looking for her hut wandered the mountains for hours, but never found her home even though they could see the smoke from her fire rising in the distance. No matter how far any seekers of her hut traveled, the fire never came closer.

“The man watched Kahuna struggle to reach shore, until a great, big wave burst out of nowhere, capsizing her canoe. The woman went under the water and never resurfaced. Bravely, the man ran out into the sea, swam to the canoe, and searched around the ocean floor until he saw the little old woman sitting on the ocean floor as if she were waiting for him. She smiled when she saw him, and extended a bony hand gnarled with age out to him,” his mother would say, slowly reaching her hand out towards Brendon before tickling him until he squealed. “The man wrapped the woman up in his arms, and carried her from the sea.”

“‘For saving my life, I will grant you one wish,’ Kahuna said to man,” his mother would say, using a creaky worn voice like old stretched out leather to imitate the woman.

“’I wish but to see my wife again,’ the man said,” his mother would say, dropping her voice as low as it would go to imitate the man.

“‘I cannot bring the spirits back from the sea,’ the woman said.

“‘Then let me see her in my dreams,’ the man said. ‘As often as I can bear it.’

“The old woman took him back to her hut on the volcano, and gave him a potion to drink. ‘When you fall asleep,’ Kahuna said, ‘concentrate on what you want to see, and it will appear perfectly down to the last detail even if you cannot remember all the details anymore during your waking hours.’

“The man drank most of the potion, and when he went to sleep that night, he dreamed of four white walls. He remembered what the woman said to him, and thought of a moment, a very specific moment. The moment he met his wife. She had been sitting on a rock by the ocean, her long dark hair stirring in the breeze, a pink hibiscus in her hair. She smiled at him, and in that moment, he fell in love.

“As he thought of this moment, his wife appeared in his dream just as she had been that day, even more beautiful than he remember.  He dreamt of her every night thereafter.

“But the man did not drink all the potion Kahuna had given him. He saved just a portion of it, and kept it with him on a string around his neck. Just before he passed, the man gave his youngest daughter, the only one who believed him about the old lady and the dreams, the potion.

“‘A gift for you,’ he told his daughter, ‘so that you may walk in your dreams as I have in mine.’ His daughter gladly drank the potion, and at night dreamt of the most wonderful things imaginable.

“But the potion was not meant for her,” his mother would warn. “If not careful, she often found herself walking in the dreams of others. She haunted their dreams, the other villagers said. They grew afraid of her, and so they exiled her from the village, left to wander the island alone. But not before she gave birth to a child she was forced to leave behind in the village.  

“That woman is our great-great-great, well I don’t know exactly how many greats,” his mother would say, tickling him again. “But she is our grandmother, our ancestor. For generations, this gift has been passed down. Our dreams are very special,” his mother would say. “But do not walk onto those of others if you can help it. For our dreams are the most intimate part of us.”

She finished her story with the same warning every time.

That was easier said than done when your name was Brendon Boyd Urie. Brendon has very little control over what happens in his head even during the day. It’s like a cloud of static took permanent resident just over his head. But the closer you get to the cloud, the more you start to realize it’s not static, but thousands of different voices, and thoughts, and ideas clamoring to be heard at the same time. He tries to follow one thought as long as he can, hang onto it like a ladder out of a dark hole of his mind, but then another thought comes along and always pushes him off the ladder before he can ever reach the top.

His mother says the key to staying out of other people’s dreams is concentrating on his own. And usually, despite the cloud and static that is his brain, that’s not so difficult. He finds his own dreams fascinating, and would never want to leave his for another.

But sometimes Brendon worries. He worries when his teachers call his mother into the school again to complain about his behavior, and his father gives him that disappointed look. He worries when he brings his report card home, and his father sighs and tells his mother while Brendon is _right_ _there_ that none of Brendon’s siblings ever did this poorly in school. He worries when his father raises a hand to him ‘for being so damn annoying in church’ that it won’t be the last time, because he knows he won’t be able to sit still next week no matter how hard he tries. He worries it’ll be more than just a hand next time. He worries when the other kids laugh at him, and when Johnny, one of the other kids in his class, pushes him off the swings and calls him stupid.

In his dream that night after Johnny shoves him to the ground in front of their teacher, and the teacher just shrugs, and tells Brendon if he was less annoying maybe the other kids wouldn’t pick on him so much, Brendon pretends all the kids want to be his friend. Brendon doesn’t mean to be annoying is the thing. It’s just the way he is. He can’t help if nobody likes the way he is.

But in his dreams, everyone loves him, and no one hates him or is disappointed in him for being who he is.

Every time one of the other kids says something nice to him in his dream, though, there’s a tiny voice in his head that says _liar_. He hears Johnny calling him stupid again, he hears his father comparing him to his half-siblings, and the dream wavers and disappears. He’s tired of starting the dream from scratch all over again, so he sits in the room surrounded by his four white walls and a piano on the floor. It’s his go to dream on nights he can’t think of anything else. He’s absentmindedly picking out notes on the piano, when he hears it.  It’s a song, something slow and sad. It’s that annoying song his sister played on repeat all last week after her boyfriend dumped her. The song clashes in contrast to the notes he’s plucking out on the piano.

Remembering his mother’s warning, he tries to concentrate on the piano, but every time he hears snatches of the other song, the piano and even his four white walls waver and turn blurry around the edges. The song blares loud and sharp all of a sudden, like a slap to the back of his head. His dream shatters and dissolves completely.

 _“I’ve broken it,”_ he panics. “ _It’s never coming back.”_

He rises to his feet, and looks around. Instead of his four white walls, it’s a blurry haze of milky white nothingness that stretches on forever in each direction. It’s like being in a cloud. Everything’s hazy and blurry and white around him. He fumbles around, trying to will his four white walls to reappear, when he accidentally stumbles through a door way.

It leads into his older sister’s room, he realizes as he glances around. The song is coming from the CD player she keeps on the dresser next to her bed. On the bed is his sister lying down, and she’s ... _ew, kissing_ her ex-boyfriend.

 _Totally gross,_ he thinks, and backs up, trying to find the door again. He hits it with a solid _thwack_ instead of sliding right through it as he hoped.

It is then he realizes _this is not his dream._

Both occupants of the bed turn to stare at him, his sister’s expression turning confused before everything dissolves around him.

He wakes up in a cold sweat and is too afraid to fall back asleep that night.

He walks into the kitchen the next morning more jittery than usual, radiating a level of grouchiness he hopes will keep people from interacting with him.

But what he hears as he walks into the kitchen makes his pulse quicken. _Oh god,_ he thinks. His mother is going to be so disappointed.

“I was making out with Cody in the dream, and seriously yuck,” he sister tells his mother, “and then all of a sudden Brendon was there. I woke up after that, thank god. I do not need to be dreaming about that jerk,” his sister says, popping the rest of her muffin into her mouth. She grabs her backpack off the back of the chair, gives their mother a quick kiss on the cheek, and heads out for the bus.

“I didn’t mean to!” Brendon blurts out when his mother’s eyes knowingly seek him out. “I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t concentrate on my dream, and I kept getting distracted, and then just poof, it was gone, and then next thing I know I was –”

“Calm down, sweetie,” his mother says, both hands on his shoulders. It’s only then he realizes how close he was to hyperventilating. “It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean to. I’ll teach you some exercises tonight to help you prevent it from happening again. Okay? Everything is fine. I promise.”

His mother wants him to meditate, he finds out later that night. If done properly, when he falls asleep he’ll be able to see the dream world, as she calls it. He’ll be able to see where everyone’s dreams start and stop, and where his own lies in comparison. He’ll be able to control whose dreams he can enter, and how to get back to his own.

She wants him to lie still, and breathe deeply, and clear his mind, and all these other things he knows he’ll never be able to do. He tries, he really, really tries to be good for her, and do exactly what he says, but the stray thoughts that run rampant through his head won’t leave him alone, and he can’t do it.

 He just can’t do it.

They try night, after night, after night, and each night ends in total, utter, disaster.

The number of disappointed sighs he gets from his father increases exponentially, and his father keeps dropping hints more and more that Brendon is ‘too old to tuck in anymore, Grace.’ His mother artfully ignores the ‘suggestions,’ but Brendon worries. He worries his father might take things into his own hands again, and though his mother  promised it would never happen again after the last time, he’s heard that promise before, and his mother is not always there.

His stress levels swell and crest. He’s like a balloon near bursting. It’s his father, it’s school, it’s his teachers, it’s not being able to do as his mother instructs. It’s the thought in the back of his head that’s he not good enough. One more puff of air into his balloon, and he’s afraid he’ll _pop_ for good.

The intrusion into other’s dreams increases with his stress. He holds off going to sleep as long as possible, but it makes him twitchier during the day, more restless during church and classes, more prone to getting into trouble, until Brendon’s sure the vein in his father’s head is going to explode.

“Relax, my sweet child,” his mother says. “Everything will be okay.”

She sings him to sleep that night. His four white walls immediately dissolve into a turbulent ocean. He clings to a piece of wood, trying desperately to stay afloat as the waves beat at him.

He wakes to his mother shaking his shoulder and calling his name.

It’s nearly pitch black in his room when he squints up at her.

“Wha?” he slurs, still hovering somewhere between wakefulness and asleep.

“Try it now,” his mother whispers. “Close your eyes, breathe deeply, count your breaths, and then clear your mind.”

Still half asleep, he follows his mother’s orders without question. He can feel sleep pulling at him, dragging him down, down, down deeper into its warm embrace, like a hug from his mother.

His mind clears, and suddenly he’s back in that cloud-like world he saw before entering his sister’s dream for the first time. But the edges are sharper this time, more defined. There’s colors this time, too.

Off to his right, there’s a cloud of lavender with yellow flowers swirling around it. There’s no well-defined borders, the color just fades off into the rest of the milky white atmosphere. He thinks that must be his sister’s dream. His brother’s is shaped like a pyramid and dark blue, the edges more defined than his sister’s, but not rigid. The walls of his dreams pulse with a heavy beat.

There’s a dark black perfectly shaped cube above him with edges so sharp they look as though they might cut straight through his skin. He stays far away from the dream he knows must belong to his father.

He finds his own four white walls, and shuts the door behind him. He imagines barbed wire growing around his own dream, not to keep people out, but to keep himself in.

He locks the door behind him.

“I did it!” he says to his mother, bounding into the kitchen the next morning.

“Good job, sweetie,” his mother says, hugging him tightly, and pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

His father huffs, and sets down his paper. “Whatever it is, I wouldn’t be too proud of it,” he says, draining the last of his coffee.

Brendon shrinks away from him, as he father storms over to the fridge.

But even his father’s foul mood can’t temper his excitement. Brendon finally did it, and for once, he’s proud of himself.

*

Ritalin makes everything in life easier, or so the child psychologist, his father, and his teachers say. Brendon thinks ‘ _cool! Drugs,’_ pops the pill handed to him into his mouth, and swallows without water.  

He wakes up the next morning, and doesn’t remember his dream from the night before.

It’s slightly terrifying.

It happens for a week or two – falling asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow rather than the usual struggle, and then waking up in the morning with no memory of the dreams that came before. It’s unsettling, but manageable.

It’s when the dreams return that really terrifies him. Instead of their usual vibrancy, or absurd but awesome adventures, there’s four plain, white walls. A prison of nothingness. Try as he might, he cannot make the walls change. He cannot make splashes of color or notes of music dance across the blank canvas. He cannot make the walls morph into a forest, or a skate park, or the beach. There’s just … nothing.

He tests for an exit, running his hands over the walls looking for an invisible handle, or a small crack, anything to break the monotony.

The walls are completely smooth, not even one tiny little bump. There is no escape.

He lies down on the white floor, and stares up into the white ceiling (he can’t even change that to look like the night sky) until morning comes. He wakes feeling unsettled and nervous, and goes through his morning routine on autopilot. His mother hands him breakfast, and he pushes it away, too nauseous too eat.

But when he swallows that stupid little pill, the noise, the jitters, the itch of anxiety, everything fades into the background again.

The dream continues. Night after night, nothing but four white walls.

He puts off going to sleep as long as possible, sometimes opting to not sleep at all.

But without the dreams, without finding comfort and creativity in sleep each night, the music stops. It shrivels up and dies like a plant left in the sun too long without water. Music has always been his only friend, has always been there for him. He lives and breathes making music, and now it’s just … gone.

He feels as empty as his dreams.

When his report card comes in the mail with four Bs and two As, his father is pleased and his teachers gush to his mother about much of a difference the pills made, and how obedient he is in class now.

Brendon stares at the report card blankly while standing in his kitchen, before shuffling over to the island, heavily sitting down at the barstool, and planting face first into the counter.  The report card slips from his numb fingers and drifts to the floor.

His mother picks it up, her eyes scanning over it. He tenses, waits for the ‘I’m so proud of you, baby,’ or something along the lines. Or perhaps, ‘maybe you’ll get all As next semester like your siblings’ like his father had said to him when he saw it.

Instead, she rests a gentle hand on his back, and asks, “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

“The dreams are gone,” he mumbles into the counter. He fights falling to sleep, because even though while he’s awake he doesn’t recognize the person he’s become, it’s still better than the four white walls that have imprisoned his dreams.

The next day the pills disappear.

His father is ‘unhappy and disappointed,’ but his mother says ‘he’ll get over it,’ and that’s that.

*

His mother has the patience of a saint, and is one of the sweetest people on the planet, but  even she has her limits when dealing with him.

At 16, he confides in his mother that he doesn’t believe in God, and he thinks the Mormon religion is kind of stupid.

 _“That’s okay,_ ” his mother says. _“Let’s just not tell your father about this.”_

At 17, he declares music as his future, and decides a mission really isn’t in the cards for him.

That doesn’t go over quite as smoothly, but his mother soothes his father’s prickled furs, Brendon spends some time sleeping on some of his friend’s couches (because _it_ may not have happened in a while, but he’s not taking any chances) and life goes on.

If he’s not going on a mission, though, he has to move out as soon as he graduates, his father says. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts, about it.

Then he joins a band.

 _“It’s waste of time,”_ his father says.  _“And you’re barely passing your classes as it is.”_

His mother says nothing at all.

He parents allow him to stay in the band, mostly because they know they can’t stop him, but he’s pretty much confined to the house for all other intents and purposes for anything other than school, church, and band practice. He’s also forced to see his Bishop twice a week even though he still doesn’t believe in God.

Brendon’s not one for living confined within four walls.

One night he sneaks out, like he has dozens of times before, to see a concert with his friend Robert. Bobby is older than him, in college, and has been helping Brendon sneak out and inviting him to underground concerts of unknown bands since he was 14.

But this time, when Bobby drops him off at home at 2 am in the morning, he stops Brendon from leaving his car with a hand on his forearm. Then Bobby leans over the center console, and kisses him.

Brendon kisses him back.

When he sneaks back into his room, hair disheveled and lips swollen and red, his father is sitting on his bed waiting for him.  Brendon fervently prays his father had not seen the kiss.

He has.

There’s a lot of screaming, and a lot of yelling, and a lot of threats being thrown his way of ‘clean up your act’ aka stop liking boys, or ‘get out.’ Then his father raises his hand to him again, and that is when his mother finally breaks it up and says they’ll talk more in the morning. Even she looks disappointed in him, though.

Come morning, Brendon isn’t so sure he’s going to have a place to live anymore.

He doesn’t think he can sleep that night, but eventually his exhaustion wins and he passes out. It might be the last time he ever sleeps in this bed, after all.

His dreams are dark.

There’s a volcano beneath his feet, and he’s in a glass box perched precariously above it. He’s not alone in the box, it’s filled to the brim with people all clamoring loudly to be heard. There’s a crack in the glass directly beneath his feet that steadily grows. He tries to tell the people they need to leave the box or they’re all going to die.

No one listens to him.

He tries to change the dream several times, but every time his concentration slips he ends up right back in the box squished in the middle with no escape. He conjures up the image of a door, an exit to this horrible dream, attempts to force himself awake, but nothing happens. The crack continues to grow.

A soft knock on his door wakes him just as the glass box shatters.

He can stay, his parents have oh so graciously decided, but he has to promise not to kiss any more boys while he’s living under their roof.

Brendon cannot promise that.

But he nods his head jerkily in response and says nothing more, pretending his tears don’t sting and that his cheek isn’t as sore as it is.

He loses control of his dreams after that.  Night after night, it’s volcanoes, or flesh-eating zombies, or a horde of middle-aged male conservative republicans trying to kill him. No matter how hard he concentrates, pulls every trick his mother taught him out of the book, he can’t make the darkness go away.

He barely makes it to band practice the following Friday. His place at home is so precarious, so liable to change at any moment that he asked his boss for more hours in case he’s in a sudden need for an apartment. He’s too scared to sleep, so he doesn’t, not for days on end until he passes out. He ends up passing out just one hour before he’s due at practice.

He shows up 30 minutes late. He knows he’ll see the same disappointment in their eyes that he sees in the face of his father, so he keeps his eyes glued to the floor. He misses the worried glance Ryan shares with Spencer.

Throughout practice, Brendon fumbles over lyrics, is flat on a lot of the high notes, and while Ryan doesn’t say many words, his put upon sigh every time Brendon messes up says enough.

Brendon’s so tired and frustrated, he almost … almost, breaks down crying, but he scrapes together enough dignity to keep his eyes dry.

After practice is over, Spencer sends Ryan and Brent on ahead. “Are you okay?” he asks with a friendly hand to Brendon’s shoulder.

Brendon kind of hates Spencer, but also kind of really, really likes him.

Because Spencer’s kind of the reason, after all, why Brendon can’t promise not to kiss anymore boys.

He shrugs in response to Spencer’s question, letting the hand fall from his shoulder.

“Why don’t you spend the night at my house tonight?” Spencer asks.

He can’t. He really, really can’t. His parents barely allow him to come here. They’ll throw a fit if he stays with Spencer. It might just be the tipping point that gets him kicked out.

It’s an epically terrible, horrendous idea.

“Okay,” he hears himself say, and he follows Spencer home.

He doesn’t mean to do it, but he barely has control over his dream walking on a good day let alone on days where he’s sleep deprived and so stressed out he’s ready to break down crying and just move out of his house on his own at a drop of a hat.

 _“What’s up, Bren?”_ Spencer had said as soon as he corralled Brendon into his room after practice.

 _“I just want to sleep,”_ he had said. _“Just sleep,”_ he had mumbled, and passed out on Spencer’s air mattress before the other boy could get a word in otherwise.

He’s still not entirely sure how it happened.

His dream had been pitch black this time, save for a single dot of light shining in the far distance. It grew dimmer and dimmer, and then snuffed out completely. And then … the next thing he knew, a comforting presence wrapped around him.

It felt like something had tugged him forward, pulled him into another dream.

He steps into a room, one he does not recognize, but is undeniably a classroom. The first thing he notices amongst the sea of students sitting mostly patiently at their desks as the warning bell rings, a few hushed conversations between them, is Spencer sitting in the back row, his feet propped up on the chair in front of him.  Ryan is sitting next to them, and they are talking quietly together.

Then something happens to Brendon that had never before taken place in his entire experience with dream walking: Spencer stares right at him, and waves him over.

This is wrong. Brendon never intrudes on other people’s dreams if he can help it. If the classroom door was the entrance to the dream, it must be the exit too. He tries to back out of it, but a hand clamps down around his wrist.

“Stay,” Spencer says, suddenly standing right in front of him. He sits back down in his seat, and pats the empty seat next to him. Against his better judgement, Brendon sits down.

“The teacher’s about to walk in,” Spencer leans over and whispers to him. “He’s kind of an uptight jerk. He failed Ryan because his poem was ‘too dark.’ We decided to get back at him.”

“Oh yeah?” he manages to stutter out, voice shaky.

“It’ll be fine,” Spencer says, resting a hand on his shoulder. They both turn their attention to the door, as a middle-aged man who was mostly bald on top except for a terrible combover that consisted of nothing more than a few wisps of grey hair brushed across his forehead. Gravity had not been kind to his face, pulling down the corners of his mouth into an exaggerated frown. It’s not the kind of person Brendon would have thought would fail someone for a dark poem. “Watch this,” Spencer whispers to him.

The teacher stomps over to his desk. He goes to remove the stapler someone has left in the middle of his desk, but his hand jerks back as soon as it makes contact. The teacher tries again, this time jumping a little as his hand makes contact, and immediately pulling away again. “What the –”

Spencer giggles. “We replaced everything on his desk with items that shock you when you touch it,” Spencer explains, trying desperately to laugh quietly.

The teacher angrily slams his briefcase onto the  desk, and uses it to shove the stapler over. The push sends the stapler and several other items clattering over the edge of the desk, a stack of papers scattering across the classroom. All of the teacher’s muscles instantly go taught, and he makes no move to pick up the mess. Pursing his lips, the teacher scans the room looking over every face. There are several students snickering quietly to themselves, but nothing out of the ordinary. When Brendon glances over to Spencer and Ryan, he is impressed with the way each of them has schooled their face into a neutral, slightly bored expression.

The teacher flips the tail of his jacket backwards like a maestro before a concert, and plants his ass in the seat. He’s immediately jumping to his feet with a started yell.

Spencer hides a snicker in his fist. “We replaced his seat cushion with one filled with tacks,” Spencer says, sliding a pack of tacks out of the inner pocket of the army jacket he’s wearing.

“You are an evil, evil man,” Brendon says, though he’s smiling too.

“It was Ryan’s idea,” he says. Ryan just shrugs with a smirk.

The teacher slams both hands down on his desk, and scans the faces in the room again. Spencer and Ryan have once more impressively schooled their expressions. Brendon finds himself laughing just as much at them as he is the teacher. The teacher actually growls when he spots nothing out of the ordinary. He swivels on his feet, and stalks to the board.

Whatever he writes on the board is illegible. Mostly likely, Spencer doesn’t remember what the teacher wrote down. But dreams are always a funny thing, and sometimes written words just don’t translate well in the subconscious.

For most of the lecture that passes by quickly (time is another one of those funny things in a dream), the teacher holds the chalk in his right hand and the eraser in his left. When he tries to put the eraser down, though, he … can’t. Spencer hides his laugh by coughing into his fist as the teacher starts waving his hand around, trying to dislodge the eraser. It remains stubbornly stuck, even when he tries to pry it off his hand by force. He pulls so hard on the eraser, he ends up stumbling backwards and falling back into his chair, only to immediately jump to his feet again when the tacks once more assault his ass.

“Gorilla Glue,” Spencer leans over and explains to him, lips almost caressing his ear.

Try as he might, the teacher cannot pry the eraser from his hands.

He clasps both hands behind his back, and then walks the classroom going row by row, intently inspecting each student. Spencer and Ryan are the picture perfect of calm and disinterested as the teacher stalks by him.

“Impressive how you two manage to stay so straight faced,” he compliments, keeping his voice soft even though he knows he doesn’t have to. This is a memory. Nothing he says or do will change it.

“Thanks,” Spencer says, giving him that blinding smile he may or may not be a little bit in love with. “Now the _pièce de résistance.”_

Brendon watches at the teacher stomps to the front of the classroom again, when he suddenly goes still mid-step. There’s a strange, ominous gurgling sound that comes from his stomach as the teacher hunches forward slightly. Then he’s running from the room as fast as he can with his legs pressed together. Brendon knows that walk, the I’m-about-to-shit-my-pants waddle.

The minute the teacher is out the door, both Spencer and Ryan finally break character and burst out laughing.

“There’s this little snack slash coffee shop run by the seniors in the lobby of the school,” Spencer explains. “The teacher goes there every morning before this class to get coffee. Ryan’s dating one of the girls who works there. He may have enticed her to put laxatives in his coffee.”

“You guys are kind of mean,” Brendon says, but he’s laughing and there’s no real malice behind his words.

Spencer shrugs in response. “Karma’s a bitch,” he says.

“Did you guys get in trouble for it?”

“Nah,” Spencer says. “Never got caught.”

Brendon shakes his head fondly at him. “I should go now,” he says, aware he’s intruded too much on Spencer’s dream, but he wants to stay. This was … nice, for a change.

“Hey, wait,” Spencer says, catching his wrist again. “You had fun right? You’ve just seemed kind of upset earlier, and I wanted to cheer you up.”

“Yeah,” Brendon says, and if this was the real world, he’s a sure a blush would have blossomed across his cheeks. “Yeah, I did. Thank you.”

 “Listen, B,” he says, still holding on tightly to Brendon’s wrist. “I don’t know what’s going on, but everything’s going to be fine. Okay?”

Brendon seriously doubts that, but he says, “Okay.” Spencer still seems reluctant to let him go, so he does something stupid and totally Brendon. “You want to watch music float through the air?”

Spencer arches his eyebrows. “Yeah, sure,” he says.

“Come on,” Brendon says, shifting his wrist out of Spencer’s hand so he can lace their fingers instead.

For the first time ever, Brendon pulls someone else behind his four white walls.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have once again failed to make my story as short as I originally wanted it to be. -_- . This story is just fighting me every step of the way, and it's super frustrating, and now I'm just trying to corral it back in so I can get to the intended ending. But I started it, so I'll finish it. This is just a super short chapter (by my standards) because I fully intended to have this story done by now, but there's still several scenes to go that'll probably take at least a few days to write, probably more. 
> 
> And also, oh my god, I have recently discovered the awesomeness that is Pierce the Veil (and by recently I mean within the last week), which has rapidly descended me down the rabbit hole of obsession. And as such, my new obsessions has officially led me to start my fourth, FOURTH, partially finished Band-related fanfic including this one and You Pull Me Under. All I can say now is ... Help me.

He sneaks into the house just after sunrise, shutting the door silently behind him. He slips down the hall, and stops cold in his tracks.

His father is sitting poised in the family room chaise placed precisely to face the entrance.

His father rises steadily to his feet, hands clasped behind his back, lips a thin, white line. “Where have you been?”

“I … spent the night at Spencer’s,” Brendon mumbles as he wipes his sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans.

“On a school night? Without calling?”

“I forgot,” he lies, focusing determinedly on the red hand-shaped splotch of paint on the floor, courtesy of his niece, that stands out in stark contrast to the white carpet.

“Is Spencer your boyfriend? Are you sinning with this boy?”

“What? No. He’s … he’s just a friend,” Brendon says, eyes darting upwards as his father advances.

“Am I just supposed to take your word for it?”

“Um … yes?” Brendon ventures, unsure of what his father wants.

It’s apparently the wrong thing to say.

His father narrows his eyes, face creasing in disgust. “Go to your room.”

Brendon’s knees lock, and his feet stick to the floor like a mouse in a glue trap. He hesitates far too long for his father, who simmers and suddenly appears in his face, grabbing his wrist hard enough to bruise. His father drags him up the stairs and throws him into his bedroom hard enough that he stumbles and falls to his knees.

“Stay there,” his father says.

Does he mean on the floor? Or just the bedroom? Or … He doesn’t have much time to worry about it. His father returns a moment later with something in his hands that sends Brendon’s heart racing, beating against his ribs like a feral cat against the bars of a trap.

He scampers backwards until he hits his dresser, rattling the items scattered across the top. A few of his CDs crash to the ground. He winces at the _crack_ they make as they hit the floor.

“It’s time you learned your place,” his father says, locking the door behind him.

*

Brendon doesn’t remember falling asleep, but somehow he ends up in his dream world. There’s only three walls, though, painted completely black. The ceiling opens up to the night sky, and where the fourth wall should be there’s a stone stairwell that winds down to a forest. A full moon hangs over the top of the forest, reflecting off the tree tops, the only part of the forest visible from his vantage point.

There’s a heavy _crunch, crunch, crunch_ of breaking branches through the forest. The tops of the trees shiver in turn as something large tramples past them. It’s completely black in his room, save for a sliver of moonlight forest that peaks in. The moonlight illuminates a brass handle a mere inch from his nose, and he can feel the crease of a door against the sensitive skin of his back through his thin, stained tee.

The door … _That’s new_ , he thinks. Somehow, though, he knows exactly what it is, and where it leads.

Heavy foot falls stomp against the floor, wood groaning under the weight of the steps that come to rest on the other side of the door.

He holds his breath.

_Bam! Bam! Bam!_

The door at his back rattles as it’s rammed from the other side.

_Bam! Bam! Bam!_

The door crepitates under the onslaught, and the next _bang_ against the door creates a crack. He can feel it forming somewhere near his shoulder and spreading wider in each direction. He pushes his weight more solidly against the frame. He doesn’t know exactly what is on the other side, but he knows he can’t let it in.

He can’t.

It’ll … it’ll …

The creature in the forest reaches the stairs. The entire room trembles and shakes with each step it takes up the steps.  He tries to force the fourth wall up, but it shatters with each step the creature takes.

The creature crests over the top of the stairs, blocking out the light of the moon so only its massive silhouette is visible. The pounding on the door increases, each _bang_ against the frame shuddering through him. The door splinters and groans, little pieces of wood flying past his face. He squeezes his eyes shut and clasps his hands over his ears as the creature draws closer, so close it could touch him.

He’s completely boxed in, no hope of escaping whatever fate has in store for him. And then …

Everything stops.

The door falls still and silent. The room stops shivering and shaking.

 He pulls his knees to his chest and hides his face in his knees, pressing his hands harder into his ears.  It’s always quietest just before the storm, after all.

A hand touches his hair.

Brendon jerks so violently his back cracks and his head smacks against the door.

“Easy,” a gentle, feminine voice says. “Relax, it’s just me.”

He risks peaking his eyes open to see his mother standing in his room.

She reaches for him again, and he jerks away from her outstretched hand.

“It’s just me,” she says again, a frown tugging down the corner of her lips. “The real me.” She rises to her feet, and walks to the top of the stairs. His mother casts a worried glance back at him. In her hand, she conjures up a paintbrush, and paints a sun in place of the moon. It instantly lights up his room, and the forest below in warm golden rays. As she walks back towards him, she touches each of the three standing walls, changing them from an inky black color to a mix of pink, purple, and yellow pastels that remind him of Easter. But the cracked door remains firmly in place behind him.

That she can not change.

“See,” his mother says, kneeling down next to him, and placing a hand on his shoulder.

“I didn’t know we could do that,” he says, uncurling a little from his tightly coiled position, but keeping his arms wound around his knees.

“I didn’t tell you we could,” she says, sitting down on the floor, her back pressed against the door like his, “Because dreams come for a person’s subconscious. They are a part of a person, a part of who they are, and a part of what they believe in and have fear of even if they themselves are unaware of it during the day. Messing with someone’s dreams, with their subconscious, could change who a person is.”

“Oh,” he says and falls silent. He doesn’t know what else to say.

She opens her arms, and he tilts over, let’s her embrace him. “What troubles you, my dear?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” he mumbles.

“You were having a nightmare so bad you were sending spikes of terror out into the dream world. You were giving your sister nightmares.”

“Sorry,” he says, but offers nothing more. He can never tell his mother what happened.

“You have nothing to fear here,” she says.

He tenses. Tendrils of black reach out from the edges of the door, slowly consuming the splashes of color created by his mother. The sun his mother drew dims, and an all too familiar face flashes on one wall before quickly disappearing.

His mother’s frown deepens. “Okay,” she tightly says. “Okay,” she says again, and suddenly stands up. She pulls him to his feet, as well, and cups his cheeks with both hands. She brushes her thumb under his left eye.  He knows it’s bruised in the real world. He worries it shows in the dream world, as well as all the other bruises he knows now decorate his skin. “Never again,” she says, confirming his fears. He wonders how much else she can see in his dreams. “You can trust me on this. You need not fear him again. Okay?”

He does trust his mother, but … he also doesn’t believe her. He nods in response, but this is his dream.

You can’t really hide anything in a dream.

“I love you, no matter what,” she says, hugging him close. “I’m sorry it hasn’t seemed that way lately, but I do. Everything is going to be just fine,” she says, and kisses his forehead.  

She walks over to the mangled door barely hanging on its hinges. Over the biggest crack, she places a tiny, floral Band-Aid. “Just a start,” she says, and winks at him. It’s so ridiculous, he cracks a smile in response. “Sweet dreams my love,” his mother says, and disappears.

Brendon places his palm flat over the tiny floral Band-Aid, and laughs. This time when he pushes on the door, it recedes. It’s still there, still cracked, but at least now he has a little bit of control over it again.

He grabs the paint brush his mother left behind, and paints himself a better dream.

*

“What the fuck happened to your face?” Ryan says when Brendon walks into the practice space the next day.

Brent has yet to arrive, but Spencer whips his head up from where he’d been staring at a book placed over his drums at Ryan’s sudden outburst.

“Oh, you know, nothing,” Brendon stutters in reply. Ryan stare is so intense, Brendon’s heart speeds up a little. He’s shown up with a bruise on his face once, maybe twice before in the half a year he’s known them, but the doesn’t think he’s ever given Ryan much reason to be this suspicious of a black eye. He's clumsy and awkward, he skateboards. Accidents happen. "It's nothing."

As both of his bandmates continue to stare at him, he shuffles his feet nervously, and gingerly touches the bruised flesh around his eye.  “It was nothing,” Brendon reiterates a little more firmly.

Ryan narrows his eyes and advances, as Spencer rises from his drums.

He backs away from them until he trips over his own damn guitar case and goes flying backwards, his back colliding with the wall. He barely manages to stay on his feet as the two corner him. Brendon knows Ryan and Spencer would never hurt him, and that’s acting quite foolishly at the moment. But what happened yesterday with his father is still so fresh in his mind that he flinches when Ryan grabs his arm, and forces the sleeve of his shirt up, revealing the finger-shaped bruises around his wrist.

“Nothing, huh?” Ryan sarcastically says, but lets Brendon tug his wrist free and pull his shirt back down.

“Is that because you spent the night at my place?” Spencer asks, worrying at his bottom lip.

“No,” Brendon vehemently denies, because he won’t let Spencer blame himself for this. He takes on too much responsibility as it is for a kid his age. “Nothing happened. It’s just …”

“He just hits you for the fun of it?” Ryan says crossing his arms across his chest. There’s something  angry and bitter, but also incredibly sad in his voice. Brendon looks away from Ryan’s piercing gaze, because he knows if he keeps meeting his eyes he’ll give away too much.

“No,” Brendon mumbles.

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan murmurs. “Brendon  –”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Brendon quickly cuts Ryan off. He doesn’t want either of them to make a big deal out of this. “It won’t happen again.”  

“That’s what my father says every time,” Ryan says, and Brendon winces, because yeah, he should have thought of that. Should have known that was the reason Ryan could just tell without Brendon having to say a damn thing.  “His promises never last very long.”

“It was my mother,” Brendon mumbles. His father hadn’t spoken a single word to him since he snuck in yesterday morning. He looks away from Ryan’s all-to-understanding eyes again. It’s just too much right now. “I’m pretty sure she threatened to divorce him if it happened again.” He tries to play it off as a joke, but Brendon’s about 70% sure that’s exactly what his mother did after she interrupted his nightmare.

“Are you guys fighting again?” Brent fortunately interrupts. Brent sighs in exasperation and drops his bass onto the ground, as he kicks the door shut behind him.

“No,” Ryan snaps, turning to glare at Brent. Brendon uses the opportunity to slip past him and Spencer.

“Hey,” Ryan says, grabbing his arm to stop him. Brendon hisses, and pulls his arm away. Ryan’s scowl slips into something that looks like sympathy. Brendon preferred the scowl. “If you ever need to get away for a few hours, or if you need something, call me, okay? I’ll come pick you up.”

“Thanks,” Brendon says, offering him a shy smile. Honestly, up until this moment he had thought Ryan kind of hated him. “I appreciate it.”

If his voice is a bit hoarse during practice, and if Spencer and Ryan won’t stop sending worried glances in his directions, nobody says anything about it.

*

“Are you sure it’s safe for you to spend the night tonight?” Spencer asks for probably the tenth time since practice ended.  

“Yeah, dude. Of course,” he says. His mother all but insisted, even called Ginger herself to make sure it was okay for Brendon to spend the night. His mother wants him out of the house for a reason tonight, and Brendon’s not so sure he really wants to know the reason why. But he figures his father is going to get his ass handed to him, and Brendon doesn’t really want to be there for the fallout.  It has the potential to get real ugly, and he doesn’t want to be the object of rage if it blows up.

He hates that his parents are fighting over him, though. He’s really not worth it.

Once at Spencer’s place, Ginger fusses over his black eye, which is kind of nice, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell her it’s not the worst bruise he has right now. He spins her some story of crashing on his skateboard, and she doesn’t believe him any more than Spencer does.

He changes in the bathroom before bed, which makes Spencer stare at him with those sad eyes again. He promptly ignores them, and flops down on the air mattress even though Spencer asked him probably a 100 times if he wanted to take the bed instead.

“I’m fine, Spencer. Honestly,” he mumbles around a yawn.

“That’s what Ryan always says,” Spencer says so softly he almost misses it. It’s the last either of them say before falling asleep.

In his dream, he plucks out a new tune he thought of for the dark lyrics Ryan handed him that day on the piano that takes up the entire floor of his dream room. The lyrics are dark and heavy, but he thinks the minor chord and the slow beat Ryan picked out might be too much. He’s trying out a quicker beat in different chords when he feels it.

It’s like someone threw something heavy against the outside of his four walls. It thuds against the outside of his dream, and his room shakes and shudders before falling still. When it doesn’t happen again, he returns to the piano only to be interrupted a few minutes later by another hit against his wall. This time there was a faint emotion attached to the hit against his dream, an emotion that crackles along his white walls like black lightning:

_Fear._

He tries to ignore it, but his curiosity and worry get the better of him.

He doesn’t know if the techniques his mother taught him will work while he’s already asleep, but he’s got nothing to lose, right?

He closes his eyes, slows his breathing, and clears his mind, focusing solely on a door to the dream world.

Apparently, it’s much easier when you’re already asleep. He slips out of his dream with ease.

There’s two oval-shaped, yellow clouds off to his left, one a pale yellow, and the other the color of an egg yolk. In the middle, the two dreams touch, the edges blurring into one. _That must be the twins,_ Brendon thinks. He didn’t know it was possible for dreams to touch like that.

But it’s the stormy grey cloud that’s practically on top of his own dream that catches his attention the most. It’s lumpy, and the lumps move, like someone is punching holes into a malleable surface from the inside. Electricity crackles around the outside, and then shoots out in the real world, narrowly missing the twin’s dream clouds. He knows what his mother meant now when she said he was sending tendrils of terror into the dream world. 

Brendon takes a deep breath, and steps through the thin barrier of Spencer’s dream.

Spencer is standing at the bottom of a long staircase that keeps growing and growing and growing in height. At the top of the stairs stands another Brendon, one conjured from Spencer’s subconscious.

 _“It’s your fault,”_ Dream Brendon says. _“I hate you.”_

 _“Please, don’t go. I’m sorry,”_ Spencer says.

Brendon has seen enough.

He knows the repercussions of messing with another person’s dreams, but he refuses to even let Spencer’s subconscious think it’s somehow his fault what happened.

Brendon pushes the dream version of himself through a door at the top of the stairs, and locks the door. He makes the stairs disappear, and then grabs a startled Spencer’s hand, imagines a door, and pulls him through. He takes Spencer to the only place he can really think of right now, the park just outside of their practice space where the two of them often meet before practice just to hang out and talk, and sometimes get ice cream.

He pushes Spencer down onto one of the park benches. “It’s not your fault, Spencer,” he says.

“But –”

“It’s not your fault. My father was just looking for an excuse. He hates that I’m not as smart as my siblings. He hates that I can never sit still. He hates that I don’t want to go on a mission for the church. He hates that I like girls and boys,” he admits, hoping Spencer won’t remember much of this dream in the morning. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. For Spencer, this is just a dream for all he knows. “It was a long time coming, and had absolutely nothing to do with you.”

“Brendon,” Spencer says, staring at him as intensely as Ryan was in practice earlier. Spencer's dream form doesn’t say a word, but he can hear Spencer’s thoughts, hear ‘ _is this real?’_ echoing off the invisible edges of the dream.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself all the time,” he says, ignoring the question. “I gotta go, but,” he says, glancing around the dream real quick as if someone were going to sneak up on them, and yell at Brendon for messing with Spencer’s dream too much, "sweet dreams, Spencer Smith," he says, and kisses Spencer on the cheek. 

“Wait,” Spencer says. “Don’t go.”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Brendon, stay. Please.”

Brendon should really learn how to say no to that pleading face, but …

Not tonight.

*

Touring is a literal nightmare when you share a tiny van with three full grown kind-of men. They’re smelly, the only food they have access to is all junk food, and because they never get enough sleep, they’re fucking crabby and at each other’s throats constantly.

Add in the fact that none of them really have any clue what they’re doing because they had virtually no experience in live performing before this tour, and they’re each in a perpetual state of stress.

Brendon’s known for a very long time that the more his stress increases, the more likely he is to dream walk.

That doesn’t mean he can do a damn thing about it.

Brent dreams of some weird ass shit that’s slightly terrifying to Brendon and makes him shudder even thinking about, and Spencer’s starting to give him weird stares in the morning every time he wakes up after Brendon intrudes on his dreams.

His plan is to volunteer to drive the van as much as he can without falling asleep at the wheel, catching his sleep at the venue while everyone is mostly awake, and sleeping as closely as possible to Ryan as he can when he has to sleep in the van.

Ryan’s dreams are full of so many spikes, and thorns, and barbed wire on the outside that it physically hurts if he accidentally tries to walk into Ryan’s dreams. He wakes up instantly every time with a pounding headache, but grateful for it.

He doesn’t want to know what Ryan dreams of.

“Why are you avoiding sleeping?” Spencer asks him after he volunteers to drive the van for the third night in a row.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Spencer hums in response, but lets the topic go. He refuses to let Brendon drive a fourth night in a row, though. Brendon avoids sleep as long as possible, but he still ends up in one of Brent’s weird ass dreams with some alien chick with six tits that Brent is sucking face with. And not the normal kind of sucking face, the anime kind where they’re like licking each other’s tongues and there's an excessive amount of saliva involved.  Brendon cannot leave fast enough.

He wakes up gagging after that one, and drinks enough Monster energy drink to make his heart stop.

“Brendon, Go. To. Sleep,” Spencer snaps at him the next night, and he instantly stills. No one would let him drive because of how jittery he'd been all day, and how many energy drinks he'd consumed. 

  _"I like living,"_ Ryan had complained when Brendon offered to drive again. 

 _"Your hands are shaking so bad I'm not even sure you could hold the steering wheel,"_ Brent had said jokingly. 

It was just his luck he got stuck with  Spencer in the back seat, though, Spencer whose dreams felt welcoming (except that one nightmare) and dragged him in seemingly against his will.

The same Spencer who is also pissed at him, though, because Brendon can't stop bouncing his leg, and shifting in his seat every three seconds, and tearing apart whatever food wrappers come within reaching distance.

"No," Brendon says petulantly without thinking. "I'm fine," he says, forcing himself to sit still. It lasts less than a minute before he's shifting in his seat again. 

Spencer reaches for him, and he flinches, far too aware in his sleep deprived state of all the times his father raised a hand to him for being unable to sit still. Spencer  _has_ been kind of pissy around him lately, ever since Brendon started insisted on sharing a room with Ryan whenever they got a chance to actually stay in a hotel. He doesn't think Spencer would smack him, but everything is ten times more nerve wracking when you're sleep deprived. 

Spencer heavily sighs. His fingers grab Brendon around the wrist and yank until he's leaning into Spencer's side. "I got you," Spencer softly says so only he can hear, and starts massaging the back of Brendon's neck. 

Against his will, Brendon's asleep in minutes. 

His dream, at first, is hazy and confusing and in the morning, he doesn't remember much of it.

The first thing he _does_ remember is stepping into a forest. The sun is setting, but it filters through the trees enough to illuminate a dirt path through the forest. Spencer and Ryan are both on the path a little ways ahead of him. While Ryan forages ahead, Spencer stops. He turns, a look of confusion on his face as he spots Brendon.

"You're not supposed to be here," Spencer says, brows knit in concentration. 

"Sorry," Brendon stutters. "Sorry, I'll leave. I'm just ... I didn't mean to." 

"Hey," Spencer says gently, interrupting his rambling. "Come with us," he says, holding out his hand to Brendon. 

 _This is bad, this is bad, this is bad,_ he thinks, but takes the offered hand anyways. 

They walk hand-in-hand through the forest until they reach a clearing, where a few other teenagers are already gathered around a bonfire. 

"Our first party," Spencer explains, tugging Brendon by the hand to one of the logs placed around the fire. "Ryan got invited by a girl he has a crush on," he says, pulling Brendon down to sit. 

They don't do much more than cuddle and stare at the fire until an alarm clock wakes them far too early in the morning, but it's comfortable, quiet, relaxing. It's the best night of sleep he's had in weeks. 

But the guilt eats away at him. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so short it shouldn't even be counted as a chapter, but I thought I'd post it anyway just to get something out there. I haven't been writing recently, because I've been so heart broken and devastated over the elections. I was so depressed in high school that I was suicidal at times, but last Tuesday was one of the worst days of my life. I am legitimately worried about not only my safety, but the safety of my friends and family, and all of the women, minorities, and members of the LBGT community in America. I couldn't even begin to understand how hard this must be for minorities and the LGBT community in America. But we must remember that Trump supporters are, in fact, the actual minority in America. There are more of us than them, and all we can do now is stand up to racism, bigotry, and sexism and not be silent bystanders. Don't let what they say get to you either. They are stupid, ignorant jerks, and their opinion of you and me does not matter. Remember, no one can make you feel bad for being who you are. Be strong. You're not alone. 
> 
> I am not going to let any middle age men take away my rights, and I'm not going to let them make me feel unsafe in my own country. I am going to fight Trump and Pence, and the Republicans any way I can for as long as I have to. 
> 
> Again, sorry this is so short. I will try to write more when I'm not busy protesting.

Getting their own tour bus should be better, Brendon bitterly thinks, but it will be worse, so, so much worse, because they’re sharing with The Academy Is …, and that just means more people whose dreams he could possibly intrude upon. He likes William, but William is a strange dude, and Brendon absolutely does not want to find out if his dreams are weirder than Brent’s.

"Are you turning into an insomniac?" Spencer asks when the drummer claimed Brendon as a roommate on their last night in a hotel in America before heading off to Europe with the Academy in the morning. 

"No," Brendon mumbles, sitting up straighter in bed, and pulling his laptop closer to his face. The more tired he gets, the closer his face gets to the screen. Most times, he's usually completely unaware he's doing it until his nose brushes against the screen. Now, he's doing it on purpose to block out Spencer. 

"Then why aren't you sleeping?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he says, shifting his weight onto his right hip so he's leaning away from Spencer. 

"Uh-huh, sure," Spencer says. If Brendon was looking at him, he's sure he would have seen Spencer rolling his eyes at him. "Is it nightmares? Is that why you're not sleeping." 

"Kind of," Brendon says with a shrug. He guesses he would classify Brent's freaky dreams as nightmares. They scare the shit of him anyways. He's never actually seen one of Ryan's dreams, but someone with that many sharp, pointy objects surrounding their dreams has got to be having nightmares. 

"I can help." 

"You really, really can't," he says. He risks peaking over at Spencer, and sees his face crumple. "It's ..." He considers telling Spencer everything, about the dream walking, and all the dreams of Spencer's he's intruded on. But there are only two things that can happen: one, Spencer won't believe him, and two, Spencer will believe him and be pissed for spying on his dreams like that even if Brendon can't help it. He doesn't know which scenario is worse. "You wouldn't understand." 

"Then explain it to me." 

"I ... I can't." 

One of Spencer's incredibly smelly and disturbingly disgusting socks ends up on his head. "Gross," he says, crumpling the sock back up and throwing it back at Spencer. If he had the energy, he'd grab a dirty pair of underwear, tackle Spencer, and rub his face in it. Lucky for Spencer he’s too exhausted for that shit.

Spencer giggles at him. It's silent for a moment. Brendon has a moment to be grateful Spencer finally let it go, when the bed dips next to him, and the laptop is pulled from his hands, and set on bedside table. "Will you tell me one day what's really going?" Spencer asks. He lies down in Brendon's bed, and pulls Brendon down with him until they're lying face to face, so close their noses almost touch. 

He wants to close the distance. Wants to press his lips to Spencer's, tangle his fingers in Spencer's hair, open his mouth, and let their tongues collide until they're both breathless. 

Instead he shifts onto his back, and says, "One day, maybe." 

"Well, just for tonight, go to sleep,"  he says, though it's already pointless. Now that Spencer has forced him to lie down, his eyes are drifting shut against his will as sleep drags him under like a hellhound dragging its victim to the underworld. "I got you," Spencer sleepily mumbles. 

Brendon has no clue what that means. 

It's prom night. He's standing in the corner by the punch bowl all alone, exactly like he would have been if he'd actually gone to his prom. As soon as he looks up, sees Spencer dressed in a tux and looking devilishly handsome, leaning against the opposite wall, his eyes on Ryan who's dancing with some chick, Brendon knows this is not his dream. 

 _Dammit,_ he thinks, eyes wondering around the room searching for an exit. Then Spencer catches his gaze, and he can't look away as the other teen crosses the room. 

"May I have this dance?" Spencer asks and offers his hand. Brendon melts like chocolate under the hot summer sun, and takes the proffered hand, letting Spencer spin him into his arms. Green Day’s _Time of Your Life_ starts playing as Spencer places one hand on the small of Brendon's back, and takes Brendon’s hand with the other. Brendon follows Spencer’s lead, rests his head on Spencer’s shoulder.

Even in his dreams he’s tired.

“I never went to prom,” he mumbles into Spencer’s shoulder.

“I know. But don’t worry, you didn’t miss much,” he says, dipping Brendon, making him laugh. “Ryan had a date, I didn’t. I spent most of the time alone. It would have been better if you were there.”

Brendon bites his lip, but … This is just a dream, right? Nothing he says here really matters … Right?

“I would have loved to be your date.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course,” Brendon says, pulling his head away from Spencer’s shoulder so he can meet his eyes. “You’re pretty much the best thing in my life right now.”

“Better than music?” Spencer asks teasingly.

“Better than music,” Brendon says, earning him a patented Spencer smile.

He rests his head back on Spencer’s shoulder as the song switches to _Sh Boom Sh Boom_ by The Crew Cuts. He wishes he could feel the cut of Spencer’s tuxedo on his cheek, the callouses on his fingertips, and sweat of their palms clasped together. He wishes he could feel them swaying to the music, the comfort of Spencer’s hand on his lower back, and the press of Spencer’s lips in his hair. It would make it easier to pretend it was all real in the morning.

But those kind of details just don’t exist in dreams. Not even Brendon’s.

“Spencer, I –” He never gets a chance to finish. The song over the speaker switches to a _beep, beep, beep, beep, beep._

"See, I told you I've got you," Spencer whispers into his ear. Brendon squeezes his eyes shut, tries to remember every detail of the dream.

When he opens his eyes again, the hotel room blurs into focus around him.

He wakes up wrapped in Spencer's arms. 

*

That morning, in the airport of all goddamn places, the label, and Ryan, and Zack, and even Spencer (the traitor) suggest … The Pills.

They’ve already managed to acquire a prescription for his ADHD and the pills for him without even telling him.

Zack shoves two full bottles of two different pills he’s never even heard of into his hands, and says, “Take them.”

“We’re getting kind of famous, and your attention wonders … a lot,” Ryan says. “It’s for the good of the band.”

“You do kind of blurt out random shit all the time,” Brent says. “And your constant twitching is really annoying.”

“It’s your choice,” Spencer says.

But it really, really does not feel that way.

He pops both pills into his mouth and swallows them dry.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the kind words. I'm still grieving over the election, but I will fight Trump and Pence, and their racist, bigoted, sexist, anti-environmental administration in anyway I can for as long as I have to. So in thanks to you guys, here's another short chapter. I'm writing this one scene by scene, which is unusual for me, usually I know how everything is going to play out at this point, but I'm just going to play it by ear, so to speak, with this one and see what happens.

The pills are supposed to solve his ‘problems.’ Instead, they make no one happy.

Ryan wanted him to sit still during interviews and concisely answer questions instead of going off on tangents about everything and anything. Now he just kind of sits there like a chopped down tree, useless, decaying, rotting, and separated from his roots, everything that gives him life, and beauty, and strength. He says nothing unless asked a direct question, and often spends the entire interview staring off into space, or staring with unwavering and unnerving concentration on the interviewer, making the interviewer squirm instead. More than once, Spencer has had to poke him to get his attention.

Ryan usually ends up yelling at him afterwards, accusing him of being difficult on purpose. The pills keep him so out of it, perpetually suspended in a vat of murky water, that he just lets Ryan tire himself out yelling, then Brendon shrugs, and walks away, further infuriating the guitarist.

Zack wanted to keep track of him better, to not have Brendon continuously wandering off because something ‘shiny caught his attention’ (Zack’s words, not his own). Now, Brendon is so calm and quiet Zack forgets he exists and keeps accidentally leaving him behind at hotels, at venues, everywhere. Only once did they actually leave the building without him, though, at a radio station where they did an interview early in the morning. Brendon calmly sat in the lobby of the building, playing music and games on his phone, until they came back for him. Zack lectured him for nearly an hour for not calling the second he realized they’d left without him, but it never even occurred to Brendon to do so.

Brent wanted him to sit still and stop being so annoying all the time.

_“Do you want to play video games?”_ Brent asks day after day now, as Brendon sits still at the window, watching the European landscape crawl by in their bus, keeping to himself like Brent wanted. Brent and Brendon used to spend a lot of time chilling together because Ryan didn’t like to have fun, consistently giving off ‘leave me alone or I’ll stab you’ vibes, and Spencer spent most of his time with Ryan, usually calming his prickled furs.

_“No,”_ Brendon says now to Brent every time he asks, mostly ignoring Brent and everyone else.

_“Do you want to get William back for pranking us?”_

_“No.”_

_“You wanna bust out the guitars and jam?”_

Brendon shakes his head no every time.

Finally, Brent snaps and says, “I liked you better before. At least that person was fun.”

_I am a different person, aren’t I?_ Brendon thinks, staring at his fingers as if they don’t belong to him.

 “What’s wrong with Brendon?” he hears William ask Brent as the other teen storms away.

Brent shrugs him off, and says, “He got boring.”

_Is there something wrong with me?_ he thinks.

Spencer wanted … Brendon doesn’t know what Spencer wanted that day in the airport. Now, Spencer can barely look him in the eyes and spends more time with Ryan (aka avoiding him). That hurts the most.

But this is what everyone wanted, right? It’s for the good of the band.

Right?

There are perks to the pills. Well, there’s one. He doesn’t dream walk anymore. In fact, he doesn’t dream at all.

Not at first, anyway. When his dreams do return, he expects to sit staring at his four white walls from the minute he falls asleep until the minute he wakes up.

Instead, it’s water. Water that extends in every direction as far as he can see, which isn’t very far, because the water is not clear like tap or pool water, but turbid, muddy, and filled with debris. There’s pieces of plastic milk jugs, bottles, plastic bags, and other bits and pieces littered across the sandy sea floor. The occasional seaweed and small, grey fish float past him, sometimes brushing against his skin. There’s a dark mass of rocks, almost black in the limited sunlight under the sea, that extends as far up and both left and right as far as he can see. He can just barely make out … the door, still cracked in all the same places. The Band-Aid his mother placed over it is still there, but it does nothing to stop the flow of water pouring out through the crack in the doors, adding more liquid to whatever prison he’s trapped in.

He tries to breath and … can’t, swallows a mouthful of salt water instead. He’s choking, lungs constricting, and filling with water. He tries to cough it up, but more water fills his lungs until they burn, begging for air that isn’t coming. His only hope is to swim to the top, try to find the surface. But no matter how hard he kicks his legs and flaps his arms, he remains stuck on the bottom, feet trapped in the sand below his feet.

He wakes up gasping for breath, a scream dying in his throat.

There’s a hand wrapped around his wrist. He jerks his arm about trying to dislodge the hand until a voice says, “Hey, hey, calm down. It’s just me.”

He blinks open his eyes, sees Spencer frowning down at him.

“You were thrashing around in your sleep pretty hard there,” Spencer says. “And it sounded like you were choking. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Brendon mumbles, feeling his dream still coursing through him in the way his body shakes and tremors. He jerks his wrist free from Spencer’s grip, rolling over in his bunk, and turning his back to Spencer.

“What were you dreaming of?” Spencer asks a moment later. Brendon startles. He thought Spencer would have walked away by now.

“Drowning,” he simply says, making it clearer that he does not wish to talk about it.

“Brendon,” Spencer asks, ignoring the neon sign saying ‘leave me alone’ that is glowing above his head. Brendon tenses, waiting for whatever lecture Spencer has in store for him like the others. Instead, he asks, “Are you happy?”

_Am I happy?_ He doesn’t know. He contemplates spilling the truth to Spencer right then and there, telling him everything. He wants too so badly. But then he remembers four unfriendly faces staring him down, handing him pills he wasn’t sure he wanted. “I’m fine,” he says.

Spencer noisily exhales, but finally walks away.

Spencer wakes him up in the middle of the night from the same dream every night.

Three weeks later, it all comes to a head.

“We’re sharing a hotel room,” Spencer whispers into his ear, grabbing his wrist with one hand, the card key from Zack with the other, and dragging Brendon up the elevator and into their room.

“I want to try something,” Spencer says, pulling Brendon down into the same bed as him after they’ve both showered and changed into their pjs.

“I’ll just dream of drowning again no matter what you do,” Brendon says, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It doesn’t matter how much he sleeps, he never wakes up from his nightmare feeling rested. He’s more tired than when he was avoiding sleep, can feel the exhaustion settle in his bones like metal, a hollow feeling taking up permanent residence in his chest.

“I got you,” Spencer says. Brendon still doesn’t know what that means.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he mumbles half asleep and barely aware of what’s coming out of his mouth.

“Try me,” Spencer says, wrapping an arm around Brendon’s shoulders and pulling him to his side. Brendon snuggles into his side, lets his head rest on Spencer’s shoulder.

Here on the edge of sleep, the filter the drugs create between his brain and mouth shatters. He hears himself ask the question that’s been bugging him for weeks. “That day in the airport, why did you want me to take the pills?”

His exhaustion has made his eyelids too heavy to open, but he can feel Spencer shrug beneath his cheek. “You seemed so down lately. I thought they would help,” he says, rubbing the hand trapped under Brendon along his back. “Are they?”

“I don’t know,” Brendon mumbles. He lets the comforting rhythm of Spencer rubbing his back lull him to sleep. 

It’s the same thing as always. Water as far as the eye can see filled with sludge, and seaweed, and pieces of garbage that drift by. Night after night of the same thing has taught him as long as he doesn’t fight the water or open his mouth, and remind himself this is just a dream and he _can_ breathe, Brendon can remain suspended in the water until his alarm wakes him up.

But this time there’s something different - a large, heavy shadow lurking in the distance. Curious, he swims closer, and the dark blob solidifies, the blurred edges defining into sharp shoulders, and long legs, and strong arms pounding against an invisible barrier.

It’s Spencer, suspended in the water like Brendon. His eyes are wide in panic, mouth open in a silent scream. Brendon reaches out to touch him, but the same barrier Spencer is pounding on stops him.

_“Brendon,”_ Spencer mouths when he sees him, and places his hands flat against the barrier. _“Help.”_

Brendon places his palms where Spencer’s are. “I don’t know how,” Brendon says.

Spencer’s struggles grow weaker. His eyes roll into the back of his head and he sinks to the sand below.

“No!” Brendon yells, pounding his own fists upon the barrier. Water rushes into his mouth as he yells Spencer’s name, filling his mouth, and throat, and then his lungs. He can’t breathe, but he can’t let Spencer drown either.

There is but one thing to do.

He pushes on the barrier, it moves just a tiny bit, but enough to give him hope. He gathers his strength, and pushes with what’s left of his energy, until the barrier reaches the edge of his dream and he shoves Spencer straight out of his dream completely.

He feels darkness tugging at the edges of his vision, filling his eyes, pulling him under. His fingers and toes tingle, a numbness that travels through his entire body. He’s never passed out in a dream before.

He wonders how that works.

Brendon wakes up gasping.

“He’s breathing!” he hears a voice he does not recognize say. His vision is blurry and hazy still, his entire body heavy like it’s glued to the floor.

“What the fuck happened?” he hears a voice – Zack, he thinks – say.

“I don’t know,” he hears a panicked voice – Spencer  –  say. “He just stopped breathing.”

He feels himself being lifted, and passes out again.

Brendon wakes up in the hospital to an IV in his arm, an annoying beeping to the same rhythm as his heart beat, and Spencer sitting by his bed side.

The doctors explain his random episode of suddenly not breathing as an allergic reaction to his ADHD meds.

Brendon knows that’s shit. He’s taken the meds for over a month without problem, but he accepts the lie for what it is.

He knew his dreams were powerful, but …

He never knew they could kill him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if the ending of this chapter seems a bit rushed. And sorry for the wait.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, honey,” his mother says when Brendon finally gets a chance to call her in London. He presses his lips together, and pulls his phone away from his ear, pounding it against his forehead until he reigns in his frustration enough to continue the conversation.

“Did you miss the part where I said I wasn’t breathing? Spencer called an ambulance. An ambulance!”

“Your dreams can’t kill you,” his mother calmly says. “I’ve died in my dreams before and woken up just fine. Plus, you said you started breathing again the minute you woke up. It’s nothing, stop panicking. You’re fine. I promise you it was just the meds. You got rid of them, yes?”

“Yes, I got rid of them,” he begrudgingly mumbles. In fact, after he’d been released from the hospital Spencer walked in on him sitting on the hotel bed, both medicine bottles in his hands just staring at the stupid little pills that shouldn’t cause so much trouble. Spencer snatched both bottles from his hands, stomped over to the bathroom, and dumped them down the toilet.

Brendon could only sit there numbly. _“That’s bad for the environment,”_ was the only thing Brendon could think to say in his shock.

The heated glare thrown his way could have melted diamond.  “ _Shut up,”_ Spencer had said, before he gathered what little items he had unpacked and shoved them angrily into his duffle. “ _No more pills.”_

Brendon nodded dumbly in response.

“But how was Spencer there in my dream?” he presses. Brendon was used to travelling into other’s dreams. It shouldn’t be possible for Spencer to just be there.

“Are you sure it was Spencer, and not just part of your dream?”

“I didn’t dream him up,” Brendon insists. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he _knows_. “It was Spencer, he was actually, physically there. Well, obviously not physically, but his dream self, or whatever, he was there. How is that possible?”

“Did you accidentally pull him in?” she asks.

Knowing his mother can’t see him, Brendon rolls his eyes. Like he hadn’t thought of that one already.  “I can’t do anything when on those pills, you know this. It’s like … it’s like dreaming, but not … I don’t know how to explain it. He was there, and I didn’t pull him in.”

“Okay, okay. Calm down, I believe you,” she placates. “I don’t know how it’s possible, honey. I’ve never encountered something like that before.”

“Ugh,” he groans, falling backwards onto his bunk bed, and throwing an arm over his eyes. If his mom doesn’t even know, how is he supposed to figure it out?

“Listen, don’t worry about it so much.”

“But the dream walking … ?”

“Honey, just stick to the exercises I taught you and you’ll be fine. And if does happen, don’t beat yourself up over it so much. You’re just stressing yourself out and making the situation worse. You need to relax, stop worrying so much. You’re living your dream right now, touring the world, playing for crowds that love you. Try to enjoy it a little.”

Brendon suppresses his sigh. He loves his mother, so he doesn’t want her to know that her advice isn’t all that useful right now. “Okay, I will,” he lies. “I love you, mom. Thanks.”

“I love you, too, baby.”

*

Resolution comes unexpectedly and surprisingly in the form of one Mister Jonathan Jacob Walker, or at least in the form of what the other man is usually carrying in his pocket.

Though Brendon hadn’t spent much time with him, he could tell The Academy's photographer/guitar tech/whatever was a pretty cool guy. A laid back, go-with-the-flow kind of personality that stood out in sharp contrast to that of his band. Ryan was always uptight, Spencer stressed too much about the business end of the band, and lately Brent had become distant, standoffish, and sometimes downright asshole-ish.

Despite thinking his mother’s advice useless, he follows it anyway. He practices the exercises she taught him every night before bed, and attempts to meditate, though that usually ends in failure or a new song idea. He makes it four whole days before he ends up in someone’s dreams.

To his surprise, it isn’t Brent, or Ryan, or Spencer. It doesn’t feel familiar, not like their dreams had become. But it doesn’t feel unwelcoming either.

It’s hazy, the dream, and at first he thought he was in the world in between dreams that never quite solidified in anything concrete, before he spots a figure relaxing in a bean bag chair, the kind he hadn’t seen since the 90s, in an otherwise plain white room much like the 4 walls of his dream world. 

“Are you smoking pot in your dream?”

Jon’s lips curl into a slow, easy smile. “You know it,” he says with a wink. “Want a hit?”

“I don’t think it works like that in dreams,” Brendon says, returning Jon’s smile.

“It can if you want it to,” Jon says, holding out the joint.

Brendon shakes his head no, but conjures up a bean bag chair of his own and plops down next to Jon. He knows he should leave, but … Jon’s dream feels comforting, relaxing, in a way he only felt in his own dreams. Plus, he could use the company.

“What’s troubling you, my friend?” Jon asks, taking a deep drag of his joint.

“What makes you thinking something’s troubling me?”

Jon’s face screams ‘are you serious?’ “Please, you’re asshole is clenched tighter than an old white conservative’s. Unlike Ryan, I don’t think it’s part of your personality.”

“It’s a long story,” Brendon says with a shrug.

“We got time. I don’t know for sure how long we’ve been asleep for, but I assume we’ve got several hours before we need to be up.”

“Time doesn’t work like that in dreams,” Brendon says, relaxing into the bean bag chair further, enjoying the calming atmosphere of Jon’s dream. He’s never been in a dream that felt so tranquil before. He doesn’t want to overstep his bounds, but Brendon could get used to this.

Jon rolls his eyes at him. “You get my point.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Brendon says. He tells Jon everything, though he doesn’t know why. It just feels right. He tells Jon about his dreams. He tells him about his father, and what he did to him the morning he caught Brendon sneaking in after spending the night at Spencer’s without permission, details he’s never shared with anyone. Secrets only him and his father know. He tells him about his ADHD, and the dream walking, and the inability to control it, and how it makes him feel like a jerk when he walks on the dreams of others, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

Jon listens intently while Brendon weaves his tale, remains quiet until the end. “I may know someone that can help,” Jon says, his full focus on Brendon. It shouldn’t be so clear, not in a dream, but it feels like Jon is really staring at him, his _real_ eyes on his, his expression serious. “Find me in the morning,” he says, face shifting into a grin, the moment passing by.

Brendon has no intentions whatsoever of seeking out Jon when they wake up. Then he’ll be suspicious this might be real. He nods along anyways, and passes the rest of the night in Jon’s comforting presence.

*

“There you are, I’ve been looking for you,” Jon says the next morning, as he trapezes into the kitchen of their shared bus. Brendon freezes, his cereal bowl nearly stumbling from his hands at the sudden startle of Jon’s appearance, his plans for avoiding Jon immediately flying out the bus door. His plans were stupid and never going to work anyways, he thinks with a pout. Spencer shoots him a questioning glance. Brendon shrugs his shoulders at him in answer, gives him a weak smile, and shoos him out of the kitchen.

Jon claps him on the back, causing Brendon to choke on his own tongue. “About your little problem,” Jon says.

“What problem?” Brendon mumbles, twirling his spoon in his hands, his gaze focused on his soggy cereal.

“Don’t play dumb,” Jon says with a disapproving look. “The one we talked about in my dream last night.”

“I was in your dream last night?” he asks, still trying to play it off, hoping Jon’ll let it drop.

“I know that was really you,” Jon says, completely serious.

“I uh, what?” Brendon mumbles, gripping his bowl tightly in his hands.

“Please, Brendon, I grew up with hippies, literally. I spent two years of my childhood living with a bunch of them in a fucking bus, getting home schooled by a guy with the longest, greasiest hair you will ever see who sang us our math lesson. Not real effective, by the way.  You’re not the first dreamwalker I’ve ever met. First person I’ve ever actually seen do it, though.”

Brendon quickly sets his bowl down on the counter, and buries his flaming cheeks into his hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I can’t help it. I won’t do it again.”

“Hey, hey, calm down,” Jon says, clapping him on the back again. “I’m not mad. I’d only be mad if you were intentionally trying to fuck with my dreams.  I actually think it’s awesome what you can do. You’ll have to show me more, sometime.”

Brendon peaks cautiously at Jon between his fingers. “Really?”

“Really, dude. Besides, I can’t be mad about something you’re obviously trying hard to overcome. Which leads me to this,” Jon says, triumphantly pulling out a bag of weed from his pocket.

“Drugs? You want me to do drugs?” Brendon incredulously asks. “I don’t even drink.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Says the person who was totally smashed just a few days ago.”

“That was totally William’s fault! He says I’m a recovering Mormon, whatever that means.”

“Love that dude,” Jon says wistfully with a smile and a shake of his head. “Anyways, seriously, I actually called my Mom this morning, and she got me in touch with a man we used to know who said he could dreamwalk, and he assured me this could help.”

“You did this all this morning?”

“Yes.”

“For me?”

“Yes.”

“Aww, Jon Walker,” Brendon says, and playfully punches him in the arm.

Jon shrugs his shoulders, and jiggles the bag of weed in front of his face. “You know you want to.”

“You sure he’s not just crazy?” Brendon said, hesitantly taking the bag. After all, Jon did go through all the trouble just for him.

“Eh, he could be. But what have you got to lose?”

That night, Jon helps him roll his first joint.

“No, no, no,” Jon says after his first attempt at smoking it. “You got to get the smoke into your lungs, hold your breath for a sec, and then let it go. It won’t be as effective if you don’t get it into your lungs.”

Brendon doesn’t know any other way of getting the smoke ‘into his lungs’ as Jon insists other than by simply breathing, but he resists the urge to roll his eyes at the guy that’s going out of his way to help him, and tries again. The smoke tickles his lungs and burns his throat, and as he exhales he starts to cough uncontrollably.

“That’s better,” Jon cheerfully says, patting him hard on the back. “You’re getting the hang of it,” he says, plucking the joint from Brendon’s fingers and taking a long drag. “It might not work the first time. We might have to try this a couple of times before you start to feel the effects.”

Brendon raises a skeptical eyebrow at him but takes another hit from the joint when Jon offers. They finish the joint together and relax back onto the cushions of his hotel bed, cuddling close together. Spencer and him were sharing a hotel again, but the other teen had disappeared some time ago and Brendon had no clue where he was. He figured he and Jon had plenty of time.

“What does being high feel like?” Brendon asks after they both get comfortable.

“It’s … it’s relaxing, euphoric, welcoming. It opens your third eye to the god of creativity.”

“The god of creativity?” Brendon laughs. “You really were raised by hippies.”

“Hey, anything is possible,” Jon says, with that slow smile of his.

Brendon rests his head on Jon’s shoulder, feeling his tense muscles relax. He doesn’t know if he was high or not, but he definitely feels calmer, his limbs not quite as jittery, and the urge to constantly be moving dulled. He feels like he could actually concentrate on one thing, instead of having thousands of different thoughts and voices and ideas flit past him, but never long enough for him to grasp hold of before a barrage of newer thoughts and voices and ideas assaulted him.

“This is nice,” Brendon says, nuzzling his cheek into Jon’s shoulder.

“You likey?”

“I don’t know yet,” he answers.

“You hungry?”

“I’m a 19-year-old boy. I’m always hungry,” Brendon says with a laugh.

“Good, let’s get some fucking pizza, watch some cheesy television, and enjoy this motherfucking high.”

*

His dreams that night are indescribable.

He awoke to his four white walls – the edges solid and sharp – pulled up his piano and played whatever melody sprang to him. With each note he hit, color exploded on his walls, flashes of pink, and lines of yellow, an explosion of green, fireworks of blue; a cacophony of color clearer than he had ever seen before in his dreams. He manages to pull up classic pieces from the hidden depths of his memory, songs he wasn’t sure he could play on the piano from memory during his waking hours anymore, from William Tell’s 1812 Overture to Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, relishing in the art each song makes on his walls.

He doesn’t feel himself drifting, doesn’t feel his walls shift when his concentrate drifts. 

The door is still there, though, lurking in the background, a dark shadow cast over it. He can hear scratching coming from the other side still. But it doesn't not control him. It does not own him. He pushes the door a little farther back, and colors it grey instead of cast iron black. 

He wakes up to a huge smile on his face, to Jon’s soft snoring as he lay snuggled up next to the older man, and to one extremely pissed off Spencer Smith.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Spencer asks, pulling him out into the hallway so they don’t wake Jon.

“It’s just pot,” Brendon says with a shrug of his shoulder, staring at the awful puke colored carpet of the hallway, feeling like a chastised child. “Jon’s helping me with a problem.”

Spencer stares at him like he’s stupid. “A problem,” he says slowly, like he really does think Brendon _is_ stupid. “What kind of problem would that be?”

Brendon shrugs his shoulders again.

“Are you two fucking each other? Is it _that_ kind of problem?” Spencer asks with more venom than Brendon expected.

“What? No. We’re not having sex. But even if we were, what would it matter?” he asks, peaking up at Spencer through his bangs.

Spencer looks livid, but quickly answers. “It wouldn’t.”

“So why are you so mad? Is it really because of the pot?”

Spencer stares at him a moment with a troubled expression, lips pressed tightly together. “How come,” he starts off hesitantly, “you can tell Jon, whom you barely know, what’s bothering you, but you can’t tell me?”

“It’s not like that,” Brendon mumbles, turning his gaze back to the floor and away from Spencer’s hurt expression.

“Then what is it ‘like,’ Brendon?” he asks, putting air quotes around like.

“I …” he starts, and then stops. Just because Jon believed him, doesn’t mean anyone else will, and Spencer means a whole hell of a lot more to him than Jon does. “I’m sorry.”

Spencer presses his thumb and his forefinger into his eyes, sighing in exasperation. “Are you ever going to tell me?”

Brendon remains silent, shuffling his feet nervously under Spencer’s intense gaze. He doesn’t even lift his eyes off the puke colored carpet as Spencer walks away.


End file.
